February 5

9:52 A.M.

Kara felt the old tension come alive as the city hove into view. She had been able to hold it at bay during the express ride through central New Jersey, but after pulling out of the Amtrak station in Metropark and hearing the conductor call out New York as the next stop, she'd felt it stir. Now, with the spires of the Manhattan skyline poking at the morning clouds across the river, it came writhing to life.

Ten years ago she had walked out on the city, leaving behind the two most important people in the world.

Manhattan. The City That Never Sleeps. The City of Opportunity. She and her twin sister Kelly had arrived there fresh out of their respective secretarial and nursing schools, two ingenues, a pair of Pennsylvania hicks leaving home to take their bite out of the Big Apple.

Everything went swimmingly at first. They stayed at their Aunt Ellen's place while hunting for jobs. Kelly found a nursing position almost immediately—it was the late shift, but it was a job. Kara looked over the prospects and decided she'd do better starting out as a temporary, figuring that way she'd be exposed to a variety of companies and could see how they operated.

When she found a good one that would pay enough to cover a few college courses, she'd hire on as a permanent. For Kara didn't intend to stay a secretary forever. She had plans. She wanted to write, wanted to work her way into advertising and copywriting.

So Kara started off as a Kelly Girl. She didn't like the "Girl" part but she went along. She preferred to think of herself as a secretarial gun for hire. There was no such thing as word processing then. The IBM Selectric was her weapon of choice and she wielded it with deadly efficiency. The Kelly people paid her well and kept her busy.

Who knew where she might be working now if she'd stayed on in the city? Perhaps she'd be a big name at Saatchi & Saatchi. Or maybe she'd have started her own temporary office help service. She had seen no limit to her potential in the Big Apple.